Thomas Hardy: Novelist and Poet

Thomas Hardy trained as an architect and wrote novels for money, but his greatest love was poetry. His life was long and controversial, with two marriages, novels that shocked the public, and an amazing range of poems.

In his work Hardy created the county of Wessex, capturing a pastoral life that has vanished. But he was also a writer who hoped for change and he fought against the strict morality of his day in books such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

Susannah Fullerton talks about this enigmatic, complicated man and the variety of his literary works.